Here we post challenges that we have tested and that worked, to avoid testing same thing too many times. If there is an issue please post under the main beta sub-forum.

IMPORTANT: If you find an issue in the challenge, then discuss that in a new thread. This thread is for noting what challenges have been tested so we can focus on the less tested ones. OT comments get removed.

Yes, Flagellocytes are out for the reason that you should concentrate on getting the Phagocyte into the organism already on the plate rather than replacing the organism entirely You want the existing one to adapt.

My interest in Cell Lab has been reawakened lately, just in time for the beta release. I've solved all the original challenges and have been trying the new ones in v.89. Great updates, nice to see all these cool changes, substances, sense behaviors, and cell types - looking forward to experimenting with them more.

I solved "Breeding", but have not managed any head way on "Breeding 2" - I tried killing non-reddish cells, moving the reddest cells into the best light, trying artificial selection to favor red and encourage their propagation. But their color seems to mutate so fast that it doesn't make much difference.

"Digestion 1" was a little tricky, but doable. Keratin helps, but adjacent cells are still affected which makes it hard to avoid swimmers digesting each other. "Digestion 2" has been impossible to me so far; I have tried several design variations, including an evolved version of my "Digestion 1" winner, and a swimmer with a fork of lipase-secretors around a central phagocyte, to scoop up the mobile food, but without a stereocyte, they are still just dumb swimmers, leaving a lot of uneaten food to waste.

"Moss IVF" I have not found the patience for, but it's cool to see it included as a very different kind of challenge.

"Maze" was a whole lot of fun

"Population Bottleneck" confused me at first but turned out to be really easy. The same for "Adaptation". This Gamete looks like it will be fun to play with.

This is my general approach to solve Breeding II. (I already solved it like 4 times for the alpha testing)

The basic idea is slowly pushing the color of the main population you're focusing on towards red, and the boost the hell out of the red cells. Pretty much once you have 1 completely red cell, you got it, in like 5h you can have enough cells.

This is accomplished by a mixture of deleting cells that get away from the colors you want and boosting the ones that get closer. I did it by more or less following 2 phase.

TL;DR: phase one is getting a genome that is relatively close to red by letting cells change randomly and loosely boosting cells that you fell are getting there, then in phase two you adopt a more strict control over that candidate by deleting the offspring that deviates from what you want, and then you'll eventually get there.

phase 1 - Randomization: You let it in observe or Incubate for a while to get things going. The start cells have half red so there's a good chance that some of them will get a bit closer when they get hit with radiation. We are expecting something orange/yellow-ish and looking for something red-ish. Here you have it in observe and boost (and occasionally move to the top) cells that get closer to red. You'll have to wait until you get some that have at least 75-ish in red (I did this solely by eye, but the ethics committee said nothing about using Cell Diagnosis, so you can use that tool to bring cells to the genome tab and read what color they have. Not essential but helpful if you want to be sure). The other colors are less relevant but usually cells with less blue are better. The point of it is to find a candidate genome that is close enough to red to be the focus of our breeding. When you find it, ignore the rest and we move to phase II.

phase 2 - Deletion: Now that we have our candidate to get the red cells, we have to put them on the top and boost them a couple of times to get a good number of specimens (having only one is risky because some random hit from radiation can destroy our candidate). Make room by deleting other cells in the way and spreading our candidate in the light, not all the screen has to be filled with our candidate though.

The point now is letting it reproduce and quickly deleting every offspring that deviates from red. Anything that 'goes back' from your color has to be quickly moved to darkness or killed off. Brutal for them but we need the red for science! Pay attention to sneaky Red-ish cells that split into Red-ish/NotRed-ish because those are also bad. We favor X to X cells. This process can either be done loosely in observe or very tightly controlled switching between Observe and Freeze between splits, that is up to your judgement. I usually let it be a little loose on the beginning and switch to the very strict one once I'm very close.

Now survivors can only be exactly as they are or move closer to red, since we kill everything that does otherwise, so statistically they will slowly move towards red more and more until you get your one red cell. When you get a cell that is a step closer to red, then boost it and now that is your limit, less red than that cell will be ignored or killed. This process guides the random changes towards what you want. When you feel you're really close start peeking the Objective tab and see if the game detecs some red cells, when it does, freeze the subtrate and search it. When you find the cell, move it to the bright side, kill some cells to give it space and boost it. Then boost its children, then boost it's children children, then etc. Boost only red and every turn you'll get between the same number and the double of red cells you had. Repeat until you win.

Some considerations are that sometimes if you have bad luck or got a bit too loose on phase two the few candidates you had get radiated and change too much. Then you have to go to phase 1 again and so on. The other one is that you are kinda guiding a random event, so by its nature this can be done very quickly or very slow up to chance, so give it the it needs.